The 519

Space for Change

Mission

A City of Toronto agency and a registered charity committed to the health, happiness and full participation of the LGBTQ community. Working with the communities The 519 serves, it builds healthy, welcoming spaces to meet, participate and celebrate together.

The opportunity to work with Gift the Code this year will allow us to increase our capacity to better serve our community and understand opportunities for our program growth. We can’t wait to see the creativity that will allow us to impact our community in more effective ways!

About

Working with its neighbours and its lesbian, gay, bi, trans and queer (LGBTQ) communities, The 519 builds healthy, welcoming spaces to meet, participate and celebrate together. From refugee settlement to counselling, The 519 serves the people of Toronto by supporting happy, fulfilling LGBTQ lives. It offers free, accessible and accepting space where people can gather, organize and work toward common goals, and it offers training, workshops, resources and consulting services that help improve the LGBTQ experience in Toronto and beyond.

In particular, The 519 offers a wide range of initiatives including Newcomer and Refugee Settlement Services, Community Drop-In Programs, Community Support Services (Counselling, Anti-Violence), Trans Community Services, Queer Parenting Programs and more.

With the innovative solutions from Gift the Code, The 519 will have more tools to increase its capacity to better serve its neighbours and the LGTBQ community in Toronto and beyond.

Challenge Statements

Create a solution that enables The 519 to manage its members.

The 519 serves thousands of people each year through its programs, space and services. As a community-minded organization, its goal is to ensure that each person is able to connect with the opportunities that will best help them in their journey. As such, it’s important to keep an accurate member profile of each person who engages with The 519 in order to share new information and resources with relevant persons as it becomes available. A member management solution will have a low-barrier entry so new members are not overlooked, and will be easy to update and pull reports from.

Create a user-friendly platform where event data can be captured and reported.

The 519 offers a valuable resource to many local community groups who are like-minded in serving the LGBTQ+ population. The event space available at The 519 is used for more than 360 events each year. Data of how the event space is used helps The 519 have a better understanding of the needs of the community, and also helps it report to its donor groups. This solution will provide The 519 staff and local community groups a seamless experience in capturing and sharing data from these events.

Create a solution that enables The 519 to demonstrate its impact by importing and manipulating data.

The number of programs, services, events and initiatives that The 519 facilitates means that valuable data is spread across many platforms. A single solution will allow these multiple data sets to be compiled so that accurate insights can be drawn to assess community needs and impacts.